“I know it would have been painful to admit the possibility that it was your own sister who was the killer. But people were dying!”
“Yes,” Yukinari said with a sigh, “that’s part of it. But in my former world, we had something called witch hunts.”
“Witch hunts?” Fiona asked, the words unfamiliar in her mouth.
“Yeah. Something that took place in a particular part of a particular country. People started to think that there were women among them who could use magic. But it was just superstition.”
“Magic... Superstition...?”
“Yes. Superstition,” Yukinari said emphatically. “But in that country, people believed that if you could use magic, it meant you were a servant of the devil, and so they had to kill anyone suspected of doing it.”
“Well, that only makes sense,” offered Angela. “If someone is gaining power from an evil source—”
“Maybe I’m not being clear enough,” Yukinari said, interrupting her. “It was a mistake. These were actually just people who did things a little differently, or maybe had slightly unusual habits. Sometimes it was just bad luck. Think about my Durandall, or Dasa’s Red Chili. Fiona, when you and the others first saw them, didn’t it look like magic? But they’re really just tools, tools anyone can use if they know how.”
“That’s... That’s true.”
“The people in those witch hunts couldn’t use magic, either. They were perfectly normal. But they ended up being labeled witches.”
“If the accusation was false, then they should have simply cleared it up,” Angela said.
“Sometimes it’s not possible to clear up. Sometimes people don’t want it to be.”
As if she had begun to understand what Yukinari was trying to say, Angela went quiet, her expression somewhere between fear and pleasure.
“The people in that area fell into a panic,” Yukinari went on. “A religious organization much like the True Church of Harris... they backed up these witch hunts, gave them a sort of approval. So no one could stop them, and soon enough, no one could think clearly, either.”
Fiona took a deep breath. “There are some similarities with faith in the erdgod there, too.”
When a majority of people believe something to be true, it often becomes widely accepted without serious investigation into its actual veracity. In fact, to doubt such “facts,” and therefore upset the status quo, can become a sin in itself. Thus minority opinions become marginalized, and the majority run amok.
“You can’t find what’s not there, but when they didn’t find anything, they just said it had been carefully hidden. People would point the finger at anyone who seemed the least bit suspicious, and they would be tortured, killed. The belief was that if you were a witch, you wouldn’t die. A normal human would die, but while the flesh might be destroyed, the soul would be cleared of doubt and find salvation—that was the logic they used.”
Angela trembled silently. Maybe she remembered that she had used a similar logic while piling abuse on Jirina in front of Yukinari. She was afraid—and eager—that Yukinari might still be angry about those words, might strike her again.
“Apparently, they used some pretty gruesome tortures. I guess it just shows there’s no length humans won’t go to when they can claim that there are ‘others’ among them who have supernatural powers. The fear of those others, the desire to escape from them, is the perfect excuse.”
“But what does all this have to do with your sister?” Fiona asked.
“Using the powers of an angel, you can make yourself look like a completely different person.”
The others all looked at each other, startled. Yukinari heaved a sigh and went on.
“You didn’t realize because I’ve never done it. And if you put me on the spot and asked me to do it, I would probably find it pretty difficult. Let’s see...”
He placed his hand on the unfurled sheet of lambskin paper. The bluish-white light of physical reconstitution glowed under his palm, and the paper began to change.
“You could even do something like this.”
There was a collective gasp. Fiona, Veronika, Dasa, and Angela were all staring at the tabletop, then looking at Arlen. For a second, Arlen blinked, unsure what was going on, but an instant later it finally dawned on him that Yukinari had changed the paper to resemble a face. Arlen’s face.
“Wh-What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Arlen asked, panic entering his voice. “That’s m-my face!”
Excepting narcissists who constantly look at themselves in the mirror, it takes most people a second to recognize themselves when presented with their own face.
“Think of it as a mask,” Yukinari said. “If I did the same thing to my own face, instead of this piece of paper, I could change myself into Arlen.”
“So the reason we haven’t found the murderer yet...”
“...is because she’s been changing her face. Making herself look like people from this town. She’s probably impersonating someone right now. She could be standing in this very room.”
Fiona and the others looked like they might be sick. But then the deputy mayor said, “I see what you’re getting at.”
“Right. If someone you know could be the murderer, and you could be the next person they kill—that’s a recipe for Friedland’s very own witch hunts. If someone thinks you’re acting the least bit strangely, next comes the accusation that you might be the murderer. They torture you to make you confess, or maybe just kill you before you can kill them. And given that we don’t have any way of seeing through this disguise, pretty soon the terror spreads to the whole town...”
If this were just about the killer changing their clothes or hair to look like someone else, there might be a way to find them, or at least to prove one’s own innocence. But with a murderer who could literally change their own body, it was almost impossible to be certain who might be innocent or guilty.
Fiona seemed to be voicing the anxieties of the entire group as she said, “So what do you propose we do next...?”
Yukinari, of course, had something in mind. He had brought them all there to let them in on it—so that they wouldn’t interfere once he put his plan in motion.
“I’m going to strike her down in one fell swoop.”
“You are?!” Fiona half stood. “What if that’s just what she wants?”
“Maybe it is.”
“I thought we talked about this! I told you, you have to stop trying to do everything on your own!”
“Strictly speaking... I won’t exactly be on my own.” He shrugged. “I’m taking Angela with me.”
“M-Me?!” Angela exclaimed. “But why?”
“As bait.” He gave a firm tug on her leash as he spoke. “If Hatsune really is being deceived by the True Church of Harris and acting on their orders, then you’re an ally of hers, someone she should want to rescue. I guess she might just ignore you, but I plan to use you as a bargaining chip. To get her to show herself when and where I want.”
“Y-You could just as well use Arlen Lansdowne for that!”
“There’s a good chance Arlen was witnessed fighting on Friedland’s side in the last battle. If I give her the chance, Hatsune might kill him.”
Angela fell silent. She seemed to have grasped why Yukinari had brought her, still a nominal enemy, to this meeting—in a collar, no less.
Veronika, who had been silent until that moment, spoke up. “If the Church girl is only coming with you as bait, that means you do plan to fight alone. I agree with the deputy mayor: it’s a bad habit.”
“I appreciate your concern,” Yukinari said, shaking his head. “But this isn’t about Yukinari Amano, the god. It’s... well, let’s call it unfinished business from my human life. It’s something I believe I have to take care of myself.”
He realized that this was selfish on some level. More than ten people had been murdered; Yukinari needed to put aside personal feelings and come up with a serious plan to deal with the situation. However terrible it might have been, he should have prepared a fighting force that could definitively best his sister.
Veronika eyed him. “Can you swear it’s not because you feel responsible for what happened to Berta?”
Yukinari hadn’t expected this, and he couldn’t immediately deny it. “...It’s appropriate that an angel should fight an angel, right?” he said. “Strategically. It’s not like we can muster an army right now, anyway.”
If they brought their full strength to bear on Hatsune, it would open a hole in Friedland’s defenses that could easily be exploited by a unit of the Missionary Order, or perhaps other angels.
“I just... don’t like it,” Veronika half-sighed, but she didn’t pursue the matter.
“The point is,” Yukinari said, “I’m going to take care of this. The rest of you, just hold back and focus on keeping the town safe.” He wanted to make sure they all got the message.